Art, nature, and people: Landscape values of an urban park (Frederick Law Olmsted, Calvert Vaux)

This is a critical study of a landscape restoration project in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York, a landscape park designed in 1866 by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. A privately organized group, the Prospect Park Alliance, is reconstructing a portion of the park's woodland landscape in partnership with New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. The project is represented as an act of historic preservation and of ecological restoration. The restoration work in Prospect Park is at the forefront of urban park reneration efforts throughout North America. These projects typically combine elements of historic preservation of original design features with elements of natural ecological restoration. This study seeks to consider the case of Prospect Park from the standpoint of the social and individual experience of present-day users.; The author combines research data from a park user survey with interview data he collected specifically for this dissertation research. The user survey reached 350 park users across the park with questions measuring park visitation habits, attitudes toward the park, the meaning of the park, fears, likes, dislikes, and demographic characteristics. These data are used to place the woodlands restoration in a social and cultural context. The dissertation research methodology features “transect walks” through park landscapes with willing participants who take the opportunity to speak of their park experience. The transect walks produce rich ethnographic data that, in combination with the broader but shallower survey data, provide a basis for evaluating the woodlands project in light of the users' experience of the park.; This study finds that park users interviewed in the wooded region of the park hold strong attachments to the park as a natural landscape. Users were interested in the material dialogue expressed in this landscape between nature and the products of culture. The data suggest that the park's pastoral spaces are more significant in most users' experience than are the wooded areas, and that a range of bodily movement in the park environment is as important as aesthetic values. The historical research indicates that the present restoration is quite selective in the elements of the original design it chooses to restore. Social and cultural experience were important historically and are salient in many present-day users' park experience. Management alternatives are considered and policy recommendations offered.